MICHAEL Kightly was tuned into BBC1’s The Voice last night as the Battle rounds began.

Over on another station QPR and Tottenham were in the midst of another battle of their own, but Kightly gave it a miss.

Even though the top flight future of his beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers hinged on the outcome, Kightly stuck with Tom Jones, and will.i.am, Jessie J et al.

“I actually like The Voice,” he says before adding that he’s become the worst kind of armchair football fan.

“The last few games I’ve watched they’ve not gone great for us and I’ve ended up swearing at the TV. So I couldn’t go through that again,” he says.

“This year we haven’t been good enough and we know that but every time we think we can get a favour from someone it hasn’t happened. That’s the way it goes down the bottom. But at the end of the day we haven’t won enough games and that’s our fault, and no one else’s.”

Wolves take on Manchester City today knowing only four wins from four games will give them any kind of survival hope.

“Obviously, it’s been tough,” says winger Kightly. “A few things have gone on and it’s been difficult. The year we got promoted was pretty tense while the three years we’ve had in the Premier League have all been tense.

“This year, the position we are in, it’s even more tense and with the gaffer getting the sack you can really feel it. It’s been the hardest year since I’ve been here.

“We are quite a few points adrift and we know we need to win otherwise we’re going to be down before the last couple of games and that’s not what we want. We want to play in as many competitive games as we can- that’s our goal.”

The irony is that just as Kightly has emerged from his own injury hell to reproduce the form that won him so many admirers up and down the land in Wolves’ title surge, he may well be on the verge of a trip back to the Championship.

“That seems to be my luck over the last couple of years,” he says.

“Unless there is a miracle around the corner it looks like we’re going to be dropping into the Championship which is gutting for me personally as well as seeing this club, which I have seen grow over the last few years, having to take a back step.”

Kightly is still driven by a desire to succeed at the top level. That burning ambition was ground into him the day Southend showed him the door.

“I’m not so much wanting to save my own Premier League career, it’s more I want to show people that I can play in the Premier League,” he says before admitting he was ‘written-off’ before he went on loan to Watford this season.

“There were mutterings that ‘Kightly is not going to be the player he used to be’, that ‘he’s no good’, ‘get rid of him’, blah-di-blah. You just hear it.

“When you speak to fans they say it, and people write opinions. That spurs me on. I went out to Watford and had a great loan spell there and it could not have gone any better for me.

“I was determined when I came back to this club that I could show everyone, the gaffer, that I could play like I used to play and that I could play in the Premier League. I think I have proved it. And I just want to continue to prove that. All through my career I’ve had something to prove. I was released by Southend as a youngster and I always used that to spur me on, to show Southend they made a mistake. There’s always something that crops up that gives me that fire in my belly to prove people wrong. That satisfaction of proving them wrong is the best feeling for me.”

Kightly feels he is close to the form of his life.

“I felt after two or three games, back to my best at Watford. They gave me licence to play how I wanted to play and that really helped my confidence in my physical ability to just run wild. Since then I feel I’ve grown with my fitness.

“I am still 26, so I’m still fairly young, and hopefully in a couple of years I can hit my peak. That’s what I’m aiming to do. Hopefully I can have a great career.”

The task of beating City today is far from helped by Wayne Hennessey’s knee injury.

“He’ll be a massive miss,” says Kightly. “Everyone knows he’s a top quality goalkeeper and it probably couldn’t have come at a worse time for him.

“He wants to be fit for the summer and if the club are looking to cash in on any players then he might be one of them.

“So it’s disappointing for Wayne. I am sure he will get his head down. We’ve got good medical staff here and he will be back in no time.”

Dorus de Vries comes in for a possible debut from hell on a day Wolves could be mathematically doomed.

Kightly admits: “It’s probably not the best debut for Dorus to come in. But he is a top quality goalkeeper as well and he’s been unfortunate not to have played much because Wayne’s been so good.

“I’m sure he’ll step in and be as comfortable as anything because he is very experienced.”